I would like to write a php script that will itself post to from an SSL server to another script running on an SSL enabled server. Note in this case, I want the php script to perform the post action, vs. having the browser perform this action.

As I understand it, PHP cannot make a SSL HTTP connection to another server. It can only talk standard HTTP protocol - there's no code to let it negotiate an SSL connection.

Of course you can have a client connection via SSL to a server that's RUNNING PHP, but in that case the web server takes care of the SSL details and PHP doesn't even know the difference (except for the modified URLs with https://)